Major GRRM Blog Post Drama Shows It's Do or Die Time For House Of The Dragon

George RR Martin just went hard in a blog post about House of the dragon and in fact he went so hard that he turned around and promptly deleted the blog post but don't worry I got to see it before it went away so today we're going to cover what exactly he said why I think he made this post now and why he decided to be so critical in such an open way right now and what it means for the show going forward are the issues that we saw in season 2 fixable or is the show already on a bad path that they can't get off of George blog post gave us a really unique insight into what's actually going on behind the scenes and I think gives us a lot of information that helps answer these questions and I think it is really important that he made this blog post right now and I'm glad that he made it I think we're sort of at a Do or Die moment here for House of the Dragon there's still early enough in the development for season 3 that if House of the Dragons writers and HBO and George can all get on the same page all of this can be fixed and the series can end up being truly great if everything going forward has the same issues that season 2 had well then the series is probably not going to go down a very good path I view this blog post as George's last minute Hail Mary to try and save the series before production gets really underway for season 3 and it's just fully too late if this is only going to be a four or five season series at most once season 3 is starting filming basically the rest of the series is all set in stone if you want to get in there and really alter the course of where this series is going to go the last chance is basically right now and so I think that's why George came out with this blog post right now by the end of this video we'll talk about How likely I think it is that this Hail Mary from George will actually work and how I sort of view the potential for House of the Dragon going forward but we'll get more into what I think needs to happen after we talk about what exactly George just said so George Begins the post by talking about how earlier he had said he'd give his full thoughts on blood and cheese later on down the road and also his thoughts on M or the missing so that's what he does with the first part of this blog post I think his take is pretty solid here and I think a lot of fans pretty much agree with it he said that well it probably does work the way that they did it for the show it was probably more powerful the way it was done in the book and he sort of goes a little bit into the reasons behind why they made the change now there's a few things that are important with this section where he goes into that when he talks about how he did argue for Ryan Condell to do it the way that it was done in the books and that he was unsuccessful this shows us that in the past and in this specific incident he has tried and unsuccessfully argued for sticking to the source material so basically there are times where George will make the case that this is really important you should stick to the source material here and they will say no for various reasons that will be important later the reason given by Ryan Condell for not wanting to cast a second son for aegon and then having the sort of Sophie's Choice aspect in play is basically practical reasons as George puts it condle says said that he didn't want to have another child actor especially one that was so young because it would inevitably slow down production and production time and budget were already strained for season 2 of House of the dragon as we obviously saw with the fact that they had to cut off the last two episodes which is relevant because one of condo's arguments back to George was apparently that they wouldn't be losing malor just postponing him to season 3 which obviously we saw them do with the last two episodes entirely so there's a lot of stuff where they're just kicking the can down the road to a future season this is going to be really interesting if they only end up going Four Seasons because every time they Kick the Can it just means they have to cram more into very few episodes especially if it's only going to be four seasons of Eight Episodes each which I think would be completely crazy on HBO's part if that's all they give them but at this point I think that might sort of be the plan from what I've seen is that each season going forward is expected to have eight episodes and they're expected to go Four Seasons that means they only have 16 episodes left to tell this story personally I think that they have to end up going Five Seasons it's just they've kicked the can too much there's too much story left I would think Five Seasons would do it justice and then maybe you could get away with doing eight episode Seasons as long as they were actually planned to be Eight Episodes the entire time but you know maybe that's a bit of a tangent in any case though right all of this can kicking I think is important that George notes it's going on because unless they're going to get extra Seasons or at least an extra season what are they going to do about about all of these things that they've kicked the can on they're just going to have to shove them all in really quickly every time they do this it would require changes to the setup and changes to the characters that would change the way that things would play out and the domino effect that George works so hard to set up in his stories would all have to be changed as well a small change in season 1 or two can lead to massive changes in season 4 and this is where George says it's time for a spoiler warning and I should probably do the same this is where George gets into spoilers for the outline of future seasons of House of the Dragon this is stuff that you have probably heard if you're a book reader already but at the same time if you're completely new to the show and don't want to be spoiled you probably have to go and now just to give those people a little bit of time to navigate away I would like to just talk quickly about how Wild it is that George is actually dropping future outlines for future seasons of the show and this is probably why the blog post was eventually deleted because this is a wild move and we'll get into why I think he made it after we talk about what exactly he said so the first major thing that George says about future seasons is that at some point between now and back when he was arguing for blood and cheese and being told meor was being pushed back to season 3 well at some point the decision was made that meor was just going to be cut entirely so this shows us that George was lied to by the showrunners whether they knew it at the time or not and potentially shows that they don't really have a plan for these changes when they make them they're just hoping to figure it out as they go and then George goes into the butterfly effect I assume most of you know what the butterfly effect is but you can just read it in George's words there as well if you want to but basically what he talks about in specific regards to this story's Butterfly Effect is how important malor is in future events and again as I said spoiler warning how important his death is when he is essentially torn apart by a mob as he is trying to be transported to safety George talks a little bit about how great that scene could be if it was shown how there's heroism tragedy and all this sort of drama and tension and everything but now apparently we're not going to get it and then again spoilers spoilers spoilers he talks about how when news of that reaches the red keep that's the thing that sends Helena into depression where she ends up jumping to her death this is obviously a major event coming in the future of the story and basically Helena is driven to this event by the tragic death of her children and the trauma over the Sophie's Choice that she made and how she lost them both anyway and now they've already taken out the Sophie's Choice aspect of blood and cheese so even though you can say that that was very traumatic they've made it less traumatic than it was in the book already and then now apparently she's not going to have another son that she's eventually going to lose at some point you have lost a lot of the things that will eventually cause Helena to jump and you may have lost a lot of the power of that potential moment now obviously they could make up some other sort of trauma for her to go through that would prompt her to actually do this but why would they bother to do that when George had already set some up that they could have just used this worry about the butterfly effect potentially in combination with a little bit of anger over being lied to LED George to drop one of the hardest hitting lines of the entire blog post directed at Ryan condle he says in Ryan's outline for season 3 Helena still offs herself for no particular reason there is no fresh horror no triggering event to overwhelm The Fragile young queen and the final butterfly follows soon thereafter so yeah pretty wild for George to just straight up say in Ryan's outline this ends up happening for no particular reason this is very clearly a shot at Ryan Condell and how he's handling the story given how hard George Works to set up all of these story dominoes so that they fall together nicely he talks about it as the butterfly effect here but I've talked about it in the past as like story dominoes how everything falls into each other nicely and one thing causes the next thing which causes the next thing well if you just throw that all out the window and then you just have things start happening then you get late season's Game of Thrones nobody wants that the way that George puts it going on with the butterfly effect analogy he's chosen for this blog post he says what will we offer the audience when we've killed all the butterflies this is a valid question how do these events follow if the butterfly that set them in motion isn't there in the first place how do you get the same events set in motion when you've removed the cause because at one point in the story that cause was small and it doesn't become important until later the changes that I worry about most in adaptations like this are the ones that have these serious Butterfly Effects and I think George is very right to point that out between saying that Helena jumps for no particular reason in the outline as well as another point in the blog post where George says if he has anything planned at all in regards to how condle plans to handle these things these are some very strong hints that George is not happy with the current state of the forethought and the planning when they're making these changes now in terms of why male or missing has a serious Butterfly Effect at the end George Goes On further to spoil the rest of the series which is again kind of his right because it's already in a published book that he wrote and he gave a spoiler warning so like on one level it makes sense that he's just talking about spoilers because this is already written and published but on the other hand it's also pretty wild when he's talking about like the actual outline that Ryan Condell has for the series the final event in this butterfly effect chain that George has chosen to highlight here is a very major one and it's one of the deaths of one of the major characters of the series so that's sort of why I think George chose this example to highlight it's something very small that they already changed that George argued against changing that the butterfly effect further down the line has it involved in very important bits of setup for the deaths of two major characters in the series he talks about and again spoilers spoilers spoilers cuz George has gone full Joffrey Baratheon mode he has spoiled the death of rira by saying yes the riots are the thing that leads her to go back to Dragon Stone and her death he also Nam drops other major events which I'll leave up to you if you want to read like his full wording on the screen or not or just listen to what I'm saying but as you can see George has entered a mode that we've never seen him in before it makes sense that he wasn't this way when Game of Thrones was going off the rails because all of the things that he could talk about in late season's game of Thrones that they were doing wrong he would have to spoil his books to explain so it does make sense but either way it's pretty wild to see George in this state so George is just like full-on spoiling the deaths of main characters in this blog post which again may have something to do with why it got taken down now I don't feel bad covering that because like again that is something that is published in a book that George has already written that like you can already go and read and I've given full spoiler warnings George gave full spoiler warnings so like it's not that scandalous but on another level it's kind of crazy we'll get into how crazy once we cover the final thing that George says because it is very notable the last thing that George says in this blog post is a cryptic mention of toxic butterflies that are already planned for seasons 3 and four so basically he is warning us of problems ahead that he is already aware of and that they are clearly not listening to him about he then signs off that it's from germ so now that we've covered everything George has said in the blog post let let's go into a little bit more detail about why I think he made this post right now and it has to do with what we just mentioned there at the end it seems very likely to me that there are important things that George knows could ruin the story going forward that they are planning to change in season 3 and four and they're not listening to him and this is basically his attempt to get some public outcry and get people on the side of hey you guys should listen to George RR Martin he's the one who created this entire universe and season 2 wasn't as great as it could have been in the first place maybe you should be listening to George more than you're ignoring him this entire blog post screams to me as a last ditch attempt to get any sort of power and any sort of ability to talk to these people and get them to actually listen to what he has to say he starts by outlining a time where they just ignored what he was trying to say and points out how he did fight very hard for it but was unsuccessful and then he points out how it has the potential to Butterfly Effect into ruining the series at the end he then warns of more toxic butterflies yet to come and has made it very clear that they aren't going to be listening to him as is so at this point the only thing he can probably be hoping to change is for them to start listening to him while it's not yet too late I also do assume that George knew the amount of Firestorm he would create by mentioning Ryan condo's future outlines and major spoilery events in the series even if he did give a spoiler warning and even if they are things that were in his published book as I mentioned before it's not that crazy for him to talk talk about spoilers but it is pretty wild for him to talk about like future outlines and Major Spoilers in just such an open way in such an inflammatory blog post that I think he knew would create some news articles by laying out such a crystal clear example and then making it so clear that they should probably start listening to him and that he knows how this story is supposed to be set up and making it clear that they're planning to ignore him while also guaranteeing to create a massive Firestorm and even some backlash towards the season three outline as it currently exists this has hopefully in my opinion hopefully opened up the door a little bit for George to get his foot back in the door and they will be able to start listening to him a little bit more because there's enough backlash where they recognize oh hey maybe we did mess up here maybe we should have listened to George they are definitely feeling the backlash after season 2 wasn't as good as it could have been and there are many reasons for that I think the biggest complaint that I personally have is the fact that there weren't two more episodes but again I do see the problems that George is pointing out as very valid ones there are things that aren't big problems yet but you can see how they could become major problems down the line if there's no real plan to address them and what George seems to be pointing out is he's behind the scenes enough to know that there's not yet a plan to address them they're sort of just kicking the can and figuring it out later and that's not a good idea in my opinion when you already had a story that was well set up with HBO already feeling some of this backlash and knowing that house of the dragon is a very important series for them I think that this is basically going to lead in one of two directions either this is a moment where George has timed this well and he's going to be able to be given a little bit more power and they're going to be told to start listening to him a little bit more because the product will be better or this is going to anger HBO because things are already on Shaky Ground and now you have George speaking out and spoiling things in such an open way and that could in their opinion hurt the series potentially depending on how they take it and and they could just basically push George even further away I think it goes without saying that my opinion is if they end up pushing George further away over this then House of the Dragon might be doomed maybe not completely like it could still end up being a passable show but I think if they end up pushing George away any chance that house of the Dragon has of being truly great probably goes away with him this seems like as good a place as any to interject and say that right after I finished recording this HBO came out with a response to George R Martin they said there are few greater fans of George R Martin and his book Fire and Blood than the creative team on House of the Dragon both in production and at HBO commonly when adapting a book for the screen with its own format and limitations the showrunner ultimately is required to make difficult choices about the characters and the stories the audience will follow we believe that Ryan Condell and his team have done an extraordinary job and the millions of fans the series has amassed over the first two seasons will continue to enjoy it so while that response was very supportive of Ryan Condell as you would expect HBO to be it was also definitely nowhere near as harsh on George R Martin as it could have been there was no oh we find it unfortunate or unprofessional that he would leak future outlines there was nothing like that right like they could have said anything harsh about George R Martin for any of the things that were in his blog post that obviously led to it being deleted but they didn't say anything negative towards George and they also didn't say anything negative towards the writing team which you wouldn't expect they would do I'm sure there was some anger at George behind the scenes but the fact that they wouldn't publicly do that shows that they still view him as having a decent bit of power in the eyes of the fandom and the fact that he is upset and pushing for change could hopefully be something that they would take seriously if they do indeed view his pull as important I'm not saying we can take that away from their response their response was basically just like the proper PR neutral response where they don't want to make either side angry but the fact that they didn't go after George at all is at least the most positive sign we were probably going to get from any sort of response I think we just have to watch going forward what the people involved all say and how involved George seems to be in the series going forward if they end up bringing George further into the fold I really do think that a lot of the problems that we saw in season 2 could actually be fixed and the series as a whole could be writed and back on track very easily so the next things I'd like to talk about are first what are those toxic butterflies that George was warning learning about for season 3 the things that are planned that he is trying to get changed before it's too late as well as just in general what does HBO and the house of the Dragon team have to do to get this back on course to make sure that the show at least achieves as much of its potential as it can at this point so the first toxic butterfly that I think George is warning about is probably something that he's already hinted at being annoyed about that is not having Nettles involved in the story I think he is talking about that as something that's planned for season 3 because the way they left us season 2 you definitely could easily still include Nettles when Raina finds the dragon there we don't know for sure what's going to happen Nettles could easily walk out from behind the dragon or behind a rock and already be completely in control of sheep stealer this is another thing that could have a major butterfly effect and I've already talked about that a little bit in some of the Nettles videos that I put out I won't go too much into detail on that because this video is already going to be long enough but B basically there's a similar butterfly effect with Nettles existing or not existing and what rira's endgame motivations are and things like that so if you just completely are making these changes you're going to have to come up with a completely different storyline for the end of the show Raina as well has a role even if it's a more minor one than rira at the end of the dance and she is set up in a situation where her role would have to be completely different if they end up making this change and I just again don't see why you would want to do that so of the toxic butterflies that we can speculate on I really do think that's the most obvious one George is recognizing that that's a major Butterfly Effect that's going to take place if they don't make a big change from what they're currently planning to do but including Nettles is definitely a change that they could still make if they wanted to so that could be why he's making this blog post now as I said trying to get some outcry before it's too late in addition to that there are also of course a ton of plot lines that are just pretty open-ended where we left season 2 and any one of them could be having something planned that would just be a complete Divergence from the book that is just another toxic butterfly that George is hinting at given what he said and just sort of the tone of the entire blog post it wouldn't surprise me if he is aware of several things that they're planning to change that we have no way of even speculating on yet and he's already tried to argue his case unsuccessfully and that's why he's making a post now because this is the last thing that he can think to do to try and gain a little bit of negotiating power he could cause a bit of outcry and show that people care about his opinion and care about these Butterfly Effects if you have any other ideas for toxic butterflies besides nettle not being included and the ones that George has explicitly mentioned in his blog there definitely let me know down in the comments also just obviously feel free to discuss any of these potential changes and what you think the ramifications would be and whether you agree with George or Ryan Condell or any any thoughts that pop into your head down there now I'd like to discuss what house of the Dragon needs to do to fix what went wrong in season 2 and I've already talked a little bit about what needs to happen on the writer's end they need to bring George back into the fold and start taking his concerns more seriously because he is completely right about this Butterfly Effect phenomenon that adaptations have the story isn't completely off the rails yet and if they work with George R Martin a bit in season 3 and in the planning I'm sure they can pull things back together where most fans are pretty happy with where things are they would only be able to do that though if this next thing happens HB is going to need to either give them another season or start giving them more episodes per season we talked about it a little bit already but 16 more episodes is absolutely not enough and we just saw them have to push a bunch of season 2 off into season 3 which is ironically very similar to what A Dance with Dragons had to do it had to push off some major battles into the Winds of Winter because there just wasn't enough room in the physical book to fit them and House of the Dragon had to push off some major battles into season 3 because they're just wasn't enough budget for it so basically we just got a dance with dragon and I understand why this fandom is very sensitive to that because that's happened to us directly twice now and it's a bit weird that that happened twice I think a lot of the things that went wrong with season 2 could have been solved by just having a few more episodes and giving us a little bit more payoff for some of the story lines that may be felt a little bit slower things like the buildup with the blockade and King's Landing we're all building towards something that we have to wait now for 2 years or more to actually get to see so that definitely makes it feel like a bunch of slow buildup for no reason whereas if we had gotten to watch the battle of the gullet a couple weeks ago I think a lot of the buildup for that would have felt a lot more well-paced the same with sort of Damon Gathering his army at heren Hall I think a lot of people would have felt a lot better about that if we had gotten to see that Army do a little bit more before the season ended so I think it was pretty obvious that season 2 was affected by having to cut off these last two episodes and depending on how they handle the budget and how many episodes and how many seasons they have going forward the problems may not be done just yet and just like it could cause some problems for season 3 having pushed this ending off people talk about it causing problems for the Winds of Winter having to begin with the ending to Dance with Dragons part of the reason some people doubt George can actually finish the entire Series in two more books is because he had to kick a bunch of the end of the last book into the next book and the first you know quarter or third of the book is just going to be the end of dance and feast well if we just lost two episodes of season 2 and we have to do them in season 3 now and season 3 is going to be eight episodes that means the first quarter of it is going to be the end of season 2 and if that's just what's going to happen how are we going to fit all of season 3 and four into season three and four well we're probably going to have to kick more things down the road and you can see why it just feels like we're going to need a fifth season I have more faith in George to finish the novels in a satisfying way in two books and fit everything in there than I would have in House of the the dragon to finish everything in a satisfying way in only 16 more episodes now I also do just want to be clear I don't know how firm the plan is that it's going to be eight episode seasons and that there's only going to be Four Seasons currently but I had heard that and I had heard that Ryan Condell was talking about it that way and I had sort of gotten the same vibe that I get from George here where it's like Ryan Condell is out there subtly pointing out that yeah we only got 16 more episodes hoping that maybe someone raises an outcry over that and then HBO has to be like oh well yeah we can give them a fifth season if they need one and then he can actually tell the story the way he wants to well George is in a similar way trying to create a bit of an outcry here so that they don't go completely away from all of these events that he worked so hard to set up I support both George and Ryan Condell in these fights I think that Ryan is right they need more episodes they need more time whether it's more seasons or more budget and more episodes per season I don't know for sure I'm not well enough informed what's going on behind the scenes and they plan to do things to decide which would be better but I would say five seasons is probably the way to go and then George I support very much in his fight against Ryan Condell and the other writers to have them stop ignoring him I also just want to say I have no idea how appropriate the amount of money they were given for season 2 actually was it could either be the case that HBO didn't give them enough money and that's why they ran out of money and they had to cut down two episodes or it could be the case that HBO gave them plenty of money and they went over budget for other reasons and that's why they ended up losing two episodes I don't know I'm not taking aside in that fight all I'm saying is that I hope that HBO recognizes that what they need to do if they want this series to be a hit is make sure that it has the appropriate amount of time and episodes and budget to tell the entire story in the end it absolutely sucks to have been danc with dragon and now have to basically be doing that weight twice over because there is a bit of a long wait for the next season of House of the Dragon but if they take their time to get it right and the series gets back on track when we're able to watch the entire series back in hindsight on a rewatch we won't necessarily even miss the last two episodes of season 2 as long as season 3 starts off with a banger and is actually able to deliver on the Promises of the end of season 2 it sucks right now that we have to wait but when we watch the series as a whole it'll be fine so the series can definitely survive that it just needs to actually do it right from here on out but you can see again how this season is kind of a Crossroads for HBO they either need to tell them you have two more seasons or you have three more seasons and how many episodes they're going to have and they need to make plans going forward based on that so if they aren't going to give them enough time they're going to force them to start season 3 with the end of season 2 and then finish everything that they had originally planned for season three all in Eight Episodes that could be a disaster but if they tell them okay take your time make a natural beginning middle and end to season 3 and then make seasons four and five and we'll give you the budget we'll give you the episodes well then that's a completely different story so just in general right I do view all of the problems of House of the dragon as fixable I really do think the series could still achieve a very high potential and be a great Series in the end but there are obviously some things that need to change based on just what we've been told by George's recent blog post it really does seem like there are things behind the scenes that could cause major issues that are not being properly addressed but it's not yet too late and if they were not going to be changed and things were on course just to go ahead as they were George making this blog post has potentially thrown a major wrench into things we don't know if that wrench is going to actually fix things or not but I really do think that it was for the best that he threw it I don't think he would have thrown it had things been possibly solved by just talking it out I think he's tried talking it out and he's constantly been ignored so throwing the wrench was the only option that he saw left to potentially save the show let me know what you think about all that down in the comments personally it feels to me just like even if it's a small percentage chance of a major change in how things are going that was worth the shot that George just took when it comes to A Song of Ice and Fire I trust George above all else to actually get it right so the fact that they're ignoring him is very concerning and part of the reason that I had trusted so much in House of the dragon's future was the fact that up until now it seemed like they had been involving him and had been listening to him more than Game of Thrones had at least in the later Seasons I'm very eager to hear what everyone has to say about this because this blog post is some pretty new ground in the assang of Eisen fire fandom we've never seen George go completely scorched earth like this then have to delete a post also a little bit of behind the scenes I know some of you will have noticed I didn't put out a video the last couple of weeks well I actually had a couple videos recorded that I wasn't quite happy with and felt like if I pushed them off a little bit I could do them better and they were talking about how House of the Dragon could include Nettles next season if they still wanted to and then one about how the problems of House of the Dragon are still fixable if they fix them in season 3 and then George puts out a perfect blog post that allows me to talk about the blog post as well as those last two topics three for one all in one video that's why you subscribe to Michael talks about stuff for that efficiency baby so hit that subscribe button hit that like button and I'll be back with something else very soon